HD Supply Facilities Maintenance will be the anchor tenant for a 600,000-square-foot building going up in Pinto Business Park. (Hines rendering)

A comeback in housing construction coupled the growing popularity of buying goods online is expected to drive demand for industrial space to new highs, a trade group reported.

Net demand for industrial space in the U.S. could reach 250 million square feet in 2014, surpassing the near-record level of 233 million square feet in 2013, the NAIOP Research Foundation reported Monday.

“Demand for all types of industrial space — warehouse, fulfillment/distribution center, manufacturing and flex ‑ is robust,” Thomas J. Bisacquino, president and CEO of NAIOP, the Commercial Real Estate Development Association said in an announcement. “An intense increase in e-commerce has steepened the demand for distribution and fulfillment centers, and companies are gobbling up space as a result.”

That’s certainly playing out in Houston, where industrial vacancy is near historic lows and several projects are being developed.

Transwestern predicted in its Trendlines 2013 report that Houston’s industrial vacancy of 4.2 percent would decline further as demand continues to outpace the pipeline of supply. In the second half of last year, 4.8 million square feet of space was under construction in the Houston region compared with 2.3 million square feet a year earlier.

At Pinto Business Park, where 1 million square feet is under construction in north Houston, several deals are related to building supply. HD Supply Facilities Maintenance has leased 500,000 square feet, and The Reynolds Co., an electrical supply company, has purchased land for a 130,000-square-foot building. See update from Hines here.

IDI, an industrial real estate company based in Atlanta, has been been filling its developments with tenants such as wholesalers of heating and cooling equipment and paint suppliers.

“Houston has 550,000 more residents today than we did before the recession started,” Ben Newell, senior leasing representative with IDI in Houston, said in an interview for the Deal of the Week. “The goods these new residents consume are stored and distributed out of industrial warehouses such as the ones we develop.”

Houston-based Avera Cos. recently leased 100,000 square feet to roofing products company ABC Supply and 150,000 square feet to Prime Source Building Products at its Century Plaza Distribution Center development at Interstate 45 and Airtex. It’s also developing a major distribution center near the Houston Ship Channel. See story here.